Remote ID - question on "how"

General
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Hi, I’ve had a drone for about ten months and flown it twice - once to test it and once to try to take some photos, again testing. I’ve had very little interest in actually flying it. Even though I have an Operator and Flier ID I’d have to review everything before I took it up again just to refresh my mind.

It’s a DJI Mini 4K.

I’ve been following the emails coming through detailing changes in the law.

Something confuses me and I’m not sure the consequences of it.

The DJI Mini 4K is “under 249g” putting it in class UK0.

What is required to enable the broadcast of Remote ID by 1st January 2028? Will a physical “add on” be required for the DJI Mini 4K? Because, if one is, then that would surely take it over 250g and put it into UK1 class, I suppose.

If it goes into UK1 class then the new rules don’t seem to make much difference as I’d still be in Open Category A1 “over people”. So does it make any practical difference?

I ask this as I’ve often wondered about those clip-on bumpers for rotors and that they would put the Mini 4K in a higher class.

This is therefore a dual question:

  1. how does one get a DJI Mini 4K to broadcast the ID?
  2. if that’s a clip-on item and it puts it from UK0 into UK1 does it have any practical difference for me?

Thanks.

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I too have a mini 4K, and my understanding is (IANAL, others will hopefully jump in and correct me if I’m wrong) is that the mini 4K does not have RID support built in to the hardware. So unlike some drones, it can’t be enabled via firmware update. You’ll need to add a RID module but not until 2028.

Because the mini 4K is a C0 drone (which is “class equivalent”, but not the same as, UK0 until 2028) RID is not a requirement until then.

With the weight requirements changing to 100g and everything being based on class now, I expect adding a few grams probably won’t matter, but I’m not super clear on this and it’s bound to change again before 2028 anyway.

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Its not clear if the Mini 4K has RID built in. A lot of other regions there has been a firmware update to enable it. The main thing is that DJI would only probably release it when its needed.

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